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Researcher, Sen. Nelson meet on reform school

Associated Press, AP 2:53 p.m. EDT April 15, 2014

Anthropologists from the University of South Florida examine gravesites at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna on Sunday. Ex-inmates detailed horrific beatings at the notorious former reform school. (Photo: AP Photo)

A former farm manager's office was converted into a confinement cottage, called a sweat box in the North Department. Though the building measures just 7 feet by 10 feet, nine boys were detained in here in the summer of 1944, leading to the death of Earl Wilson. Wilson's remains were positively identified in September of 2014. (Photo: WTSP/USF)

Based on skeletal remains already uncovered, USF researchers released a sketch of what one of the boys they exhumed likely looked like. The sketch is of an unidentified 8 to 10-year-old African American boy. (Photo: University of South Florida/WTSP)

Thomas Varnadoe is one of two children USF identified from remains exhumed at the Dozier School for Boys on Thursday. So far only three sets of remains out of 55 total have been identified. (Photo: WTSP)

Anthropologists investigating the deaths of dozens of boys at a closed Florida reform school dug up a decades-old grave in Philadelphia looking for the body of one of the boys only to find a casket filled with wood. (Photo: Katy Hennig, University of South Florida)

USF researchers were expecting to find the body of Thomas Curry, who died in 1925 from what a coroner said was a crushed skull after running away from the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna. (Photo: Katy Hennig, University of South Florida)

They dug down 6 feet to Curry's casket and found a partially intact wooden box. They found thumbscrews used to clamp shut the casket that were identical to those found in burials on the Florida reform school campus. A small cross, like a rosary necklace, was atop the casket.
But inside, there was no body, no human remains. Where the boy should've been, they found wood. (Photo: Katy Hennig, University of South Florida)

No one can say whether officials at the reform school shipped a box filled with wood to a grieving family in Philadelphia, or whether someone removed Curry's body when it arrived and held a funeral for a box with no body inside. (Photo: Katy Hennig, University of South Florida)

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TAMPA, Florida (AP) - A researcher from the University of South Florida says a team of forensic experts are using DNA, skeletal analysis and digital x-rays to identify the remains from a former Panhandle reform school.

Erin Kimmerle said Tuesday during a meeting with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson that it will take months to extract and analyze the DNA from the 55 people exhumed from the graves at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Hillsborough County deputies are looking for relatives of the boys that were known to have been buried at the school.

Some former students have accused employees and guards at the school of physical and sexual abuse, but the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded after an investigation that it couldn't substantiate or dispute the claims.